The Lovers' Chariot

Days # 7 & 8 of Lyn Thurman’s Writing the Wisdom of Your Soul writing challenge:

The Lovers: Your passions that push your heart in directions you’re not (yet) brave enough to explore.

The Chariot: Times when you set your sights on something then took control and through your actions you were victorious.

The writing prompts for yesterday and today seemed like a good fit for one another; besides which, I almost missed both of them completely because this week has been one train wreck after another. (Did you know it costs over $100 to get a bug removed from your child’s eye? Yeah, THAT kind of week.)

I’m a student of The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte, so I’ve spent some time refining my desires, corralling my passions, trying to come up with words to describe them that felt sexy and doable. Sitting here at home on a Friday night, worn out from work and other sundries, I cannot recall a single one of my Core Desired Feelings. One of them is something like fluid friendship but that’s not quite it. Anyway, I designed it so that there were ways, through my core desired feelings, that I could feel the way I want to feel through writing and speaking. I have had plenty of opportunity this year to write and I’ve been searching for ways to gain speaking experience. That’s pretty great.

But neither of those passions – writing and speaking – were really what came to mind when I thought of The Lovers taking the reins of The Chariot and steering it forward with the wicked combination of passion AND focus, desire AND strength. No, what I have been thinking of is walking. I want to walk. I want to walk and talk, but mostly walk. And walk and walk and walk. I want to log miles, pile up the hours, wear out one pair of shoes after another. And I don’t really want to carry a heavy pack while I do it. I want to (sub)urban hike. I want to explore the neighborhoods nearby. I want to come home after each trek and take a shower, make some dinner, and read my younger son a bedtime story then sleep in my new bed.

I’ve had some time to worry about this desire… It doesn’t feel very sexy or particularly ambitious. Yet, every time I walk outside for even the shortest amount of time, there it is. Walk. Put on your shoes and walk. Don’t worry too much about where you’re going or whether you have enough water with you and just walk. Turn back when you feel like turning back. Stop and stare at interesting stuff along the way. Let your brain chatter madly, wildly along or let it be still and observant. Don’t try too hard to remember a bunch of details about the walk. Compose a poem and practice it while you walk like the old storytellers did. Walk and walk and walk and walk.

This is the perfect season for this goal. It is the perfect kind of goal: it takes dedication, it can be measured in both time and distance, and it can result in weight loss (brilliant, ‘cause I need to release about 50 pounds and, no, I’m not exaggerating). I can even track my metrics on a spreadsheet – YAY!

So is this my commitment? Is this my single-minded target toward which I want to travel headlong and heart-sure? Does it feel delicious? Mmm… I think it is. I think it could be fun and, with a little creativity, really, really interesting. Maybe even useful.

Even if it’s not the passions I thought I would be talking about.